


Then She Heard Wings

by Monetarily Dizzy (SandOfTheMountain)



Category: DCU, The Sandman (Comics), Vertigo Comics - Fandom
Genre: Cafes get wrecked, Coventium, Death, Fanfiction, Fantasy, Gen, I love Death so much, Magic, Original Character(s), Out of Body Experiences, She deserves good things, Side Story, Technically my first fanfic, lol, side characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 00:52:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11840562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandOfTheMountain/pseuds/Monetarily%20Dizzy
Summary: Witch Tempered Barley Willix and his familiar Cecily are completing a simple recovery chore when they're attacked. People die. Then she's there.(For you-know-who-you-are, you poisoned me and I've loved every minute of it.)





	Then She Heard Wings

     Cecily saw  _ her  _ once. Cecily was still young to this world- Barley had created her only fourteen months ago. The witch and familiar were on an assignment in Mar del Plata, Argentina; the two were looking to retrieve an amulet that some magical arts collector had found. Barley couldn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so Cecily had done most of the negotiating with the collector. In the end, Barley had shelled out a stupid amount of money, as well as a miniature blizzard in a bottle so the collector to prove her authenticity in magical artifacts. The trade was as painless as the Coventium had hoped. With the amulet safely in Barley’s jeans’ pocket, the two made their way to a nearby restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat before heading back to the Coventium estate to drop off the amulet.

     “I’m just saying, I think God is the cause of the energy. From where else would the energy to do magic come from?” Barley was musing about God today. Barely didn’t talk a lot about his faith, or religion in general, but once he got the topic he spiraled into long tangents that never seemed to end.

     “You don’t suppose the two are exclusive? God creates the material and the material creates the energy? Or that the energy comes from somewhere else?” Cecily was only half engaged in the discussion, but she knew that wouldn’t bother Barley. Between her intermittent comments, she would look around the little open air cafe the duo had chosen to grab a snack. It was a sunny day, with only a few wayward clouds in the sky. Across the street, pigeons hopped around an unattended loaf of bread. Somewhere nearby, a musician was strumming a guitar.

     “Either way Cecily, I think it all comes from God.” Barley smiled at Cecily warmly and raised his coffee cup to his lips. When she later reflected on the incident, Cecily would wonder if there was some way to have known what would happen. Barley was thrown out of his chair by a wave of energy. Cecily tried to move, tried to get to Barley and help him. But Cecily couldn’t move; she felt dizzy, and everything seemed disjointed and hazy. With horror, Cecily noticed the magpie on the ground beside the chair in which she had been sitting. 

     Behind the coffee bar the barista was screaming. Cecily couldn’t blame her. Three men had entered the cafe, magic flickering up and down their skin. Sigils orbited the head thug, and with a wave of his hand another sigil flew at Barley. Another hurried to Cecily’s body, carefully drawing a rune around the bird. With a snap Cecily felt her consciousness blocked from returning to her body.

_      “Barley!”  _ Cecily was yelling, but she knew he couldn’t hear her. She was stuck in an immaterial plane. Nothing she could do would influence the real world. She was stuck as an observer. With a slight jolt Cecily realized she could actually see the raw energy that witches used in their magic. The energy glowed a soft pink around Barley, and if she strained she could hear a faint note as Barley used his healing magic.

     “Rumor has it that you have a nifty little amulet in your pocket, witch.” The thug spat out the last word as if it were a curse. “Rumor also has it that you’re very good at healing and shields, but you couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag. Give us the amulet or we’ll kill you. Make us fight for it, and we’ll kill you and everyone in this cafe.” Barley cocked his head, and Cecily almost laughed when she realized that he couldn’t understand the hitman’s Spanish without her to translate.

     “Look guys,” Barley said, raising his hands. “I’m not looking for trouble, and I gave all my money to this old woman this morning.”

     “The amulet.” The hitman said it in English this time, and Barley shrugged.

     “So be it.” With a flick of his wrists Barley’s batons materialized in his hands. He brought his batons together over his head like a drummer, and a shield snapped into place around him.

     “ _ What practice have you been doing to be able to instantly summon a shield?” _ Cecily floated around the shield, admiring the way the energy created a perfect barrier. “ _ Drown me. Even without a word or sigil this is impeccable. Oh Barley, I just hope you use the time you’ve bought wisely.”  _ Indeed he was, Barley was already sketching around his feet, creating a rune with a lot of circles and lines.

     “Come out of your bubble, witch.” The hitmen had been attacking the shield in various ways from the moment it went up, and they were rapidly realizing it wasn’t coming down any time soon. “Come out or we blow this block off the map.” Barley looked up, noting a hitman sketching a rune in the corner. Cecily saw the energy churning in the corner around the room, and it was fairly obvious to her that if that thing went off it would take a lot more than just this block. Barley bent back down, altering the rune at his feet and expanding it. Barley took a breath and squared his shoulders. The shield dropped.

     “ _ Oh god.”  _ Cecily looked the rune, knowing what was about to happen. “ _ May the next life treat you better.”  _ Barley stepped outside of his rune, foot scuffing the outermost line. Cecily didn’t know if the thugs noticed the rune glow blue, but in her plane she could see it like the sun. They definitely couldn’t see the ice blue magic settled in Barley’s veins. Barley slumped slightly from the strain of powering the rune; the hitmen saw his slump as resignation. The two closest to him moved together, walking towards Barley with a smirk. Barley raised his hand, the ice in his veins flying from his fingers and spearing the would-be bomber in the corner. The man didn’t even have time to scream as the blood in his veins froze. The other two rushed Barley; the witch simply dropped low and pushed them behind him. They did have time to scream as ice from the rune ran its way up their legs, sending them to the ground.

     Cecily looked away from the two on the ground, turned to the man in the corner, and that’s when she saw  _ her _ . The woman walked into the room the instant the glow of life completely flickered out of the form frozen to the floor. The mass of the woman’s dark hair trailed behind her like a nebula. Two silver ribbons fluttered out from the back of the black dress the woman wore; the cut out sleeves revealed her bone white shoulders. Cecily realized with a start that the woman was barefoot- she could see toenails painted a deep blue to match her fingernails on pale hands. Cecily watched the woman move and tried to feel her through the immaterial plane. The woman didn’t have the hum and spark that made her feel alive, yet she didn’t have the flat empty feeling the dead gave off. The woman simultaneously felt like a void and well of power- infinite and deep.

     The woman reached down and touched the body. Despite having no eyes, Cecily was blinded by light. Despite having no ears, Cecily could hear nothing but wings. The woman turned to Cecily, light cheerfully dancing off the ankh she wore around her neck.

     “Oh! Hello there. I didn’t realize I had an audience.”

     “Who are you?” Cecily didn’t know if the words came out, but the woman seemed to understand.

     “Don’t worry about me. I’ve lots to do, and you have some stuff to get done too.” The woman nodded vaguely to Barley, a smile playing across her lips. “You need to get back to your wings now, Cecily. Don’t worry about mine.” The woman winked, somehow not disturbing the marking under her eye. “Be seeing you.” 

     Cecily jerked with a start, flesh melding back into her human form as she sat up where she had been contained. Barley put his hand on her back as she retched, head dizzy from being ripped back into her body.

     “They hit us with a disruption field. Threw me out of my chair and made my magic a little fuzzy, but it knocked you out of your human form and stunned you. The rune around you kept you from waking up.” Cecily didn’t respond, looking around for the woman in black. “Let’s get back to the estate, you seem pretty shaken. Cecily only nodded, opened the portal, and stepped away from what she had seen. She didn’t, couldn’t, have words for what she had experienced. Out of the corner of her eye Cecily could see the shadow of huge wings on the wall, but she couldn’t even properly articulate that. Cecily would only be able to use one word to describe how the woman felt: endless.

**Author's Note:**

> For someone that writes an awful lot, and loves fandoms an awful lot, one would think I have lots of fanfiction sitting on my computer. Sadly, that is not the case. But I have this! And a LoZ fic that's been gathering dust, but it's not moving anytime soon.  
> Readers of my series Here and Then will recognize characters here and say "Monet, why isn't this in the series?" I'm not putting this story with Here and Then because it's a crossover with the Sandman comics (which are amazing and everyone should read) and not part of the story. But it uses my Here and Then characters, and is canon within that continuity. (So, H&T folks, major points if you can find that littlest tease where I reference this. At the time of posting it's not out yet, but it's coming. So, major points pending.)  
> Anyways, I'm rambling, hope you enjoyed. Come talk to me on tumblr at monetarilydizzy, I love to talk. Be seeing you.


End file.
